Groupworld Frequently Asked Questions

Also see the Technical Info page for more information about the architecture of Groupworld.

General Product Questions

1. What browsers/devices does Groupworld run on and how much bandwidth is the user required to have?

Groupworld currently works on Safari, Chrome (including Chromebooks), Firefox and Edge without requiring a plugin, including iPad, iPhone and Android tablets/phones. Minimum bandwidth when using video or desktop sharing is 256kbps upload and download, but 512kbps recommended. For further details, see the Client System Requirements page.

2. Do I need a server to run Groupworld?

No, we offer fully hosted solutions so you do not require a server.

3. Do I need to be a system administrator to set up Groupworld?

No, you don't need any specialised knowledge in order to set up Groupworld.
If you purchase a hosted solution, we simply email you a link to a web page
which your users just click on to connect to your Groupworld conference
room. You can optionally copy the html code to your own web server and
customize the page.

4. Do I need a web server?

No, you can access your conference room from our web server by simply
clicking on the link that we email you. If you want you can then embed
the conference room into your own web page simply by pasting a few lines
of HTML code (even with the hosted solution).

5. What operating systems does the Groupworld server run on?

Currently we have Windows, Linux and Mac OSX versions of the Groupworld
software, but it can be easily ported to any POSIX operating system.

6. How reliable/scalable is Groupworld?

We have been refining our client-server software architecture since 1997,
and we support up to 300 simultaneous users on our hosted service each day.
All of our products currently have zero known bugs, and the Groupworld
server software generally runs for years at a time with no crashes.

7. Can we customize Groupworld?

Groupworld is highly customizable in a number of ways. Because it
runs from within a web page, you can completely customize the web page
that contains the Groupworld conference room. There are also many configuration
options that can be changed in order to alter the functionality of the
product, such as adding/removing buttons, changing the size of the video windows
(or removing them entirely), and many other options. See the API for more details. In addition, the enterprise version includes the entire client-side source code (even with the free trial).

8. What languages does Groupworld support?

Groupworld can easily be translated into any language, and fully
supports Unicode characters. We currently have Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Finnish, Korean and Chinese translations of the user interface.

9. How do I invite users to a room

Simply email them the link to the conference room. When they click on
the link, they will enter the room and they will be automatically connected
to any other users who are in the room. There is also an invite button at
the top of the screen which lets you email an invite to users.

10. Does Groupworld include a scheduling system / user tracking / paypal integration?

We do have some basic user scheduling features in the API, giving the ability to set a start/end time for a room and the authorized users for that room. We have also
released a basic free open-source php tutor scheduling system on github. You can also develop your own scheduling
system. Many of our online tutoring
customers such as MyTutor.co.uk
have developed their own scheduling websites, which they then integrate
the Groupworld conference room into. Because the front-end of Groupworld
is entirely HTML, it is easy to integrate with a scheduling website.

11. How does licensing work? Do I need a license for each user?

The licensing for both the hosted and enterprise (self-hosted) versions
of Groupworld works in terms of maximum simultaneous (concurrent) users. You can have
as many registered users and rooms as you like; the only limit is the
total number of users that can connect at any one time. So with a 10-user
license you could have 1 room with 10 users in it, or 5 rooms with 2
users in each, or any other combination. Presenters/students/teachers/viewers are all counted as
a simultaneous user. However users viewing a recording are not counted.

12. Can I use a graphics tablet with Groupworld?

Yes, you can use any graphics tablet with Groupworld if it works as a
pointer device. Wacom and Huion graphics tablets work well with Groupworld, and many of our online tutoring customers use these graphics tablets. Note that with Huion tablets you might need to untick "Support TabletPC".

Support/technical Questions

13. Why do I hear an echo of my own voice when using the voice conferencing?

This generally means that another user has loudspeakers which are feeding back into
their microphone. Ideally all users should have earphones or headsets
when using the voice conferencing. This issue can also occur with some
sound cards if you have not explicitly selected a recording source in
the Windows Recording Volume Control, or if the headset is poor quality.
If you cannot resolve the echos, try using Firefox which has built-in
echo cancellation (note that if you are hearing an echo it means the other
user will need to use Firefox or get a headset), or turn on the WebRTC option in
your hosted Groupworld control panel (WebRTC is enabled by default for new rooms, but note that WebRTC is only activated when there are exactly two users in the room). Also note that the iPhone
earbuds will generate echos when used in a laptop.

14. How do we get high quality audio/video with more than 2 users?.

WebRTC (which we use for high quality audio/video) is peer-to-peer, so it is disabled when more than 2 users log in to the room. Without WebRTC, we use a
lower-quality audio codec which does not have echo cancellation, so you might
get echos if some users are not using headphones. You will also lose the
full-screen icon. If you want high quality audio/video with more than 2
users, you can enable the new Janus Gateway option for your room(s). Janus
is a WebRTC gateway which allows more than 2 users to connect using WebRTC,
allowing high quality audio/video for larger numbers of users. Note, however,
that the audio/video data goes via the server rather than peer-to-peer.

15. I get delays/breakups with the sound/video.

Generally this indicates a poor internet connection or insufficient bandwidth. Please contact us if you continue having problems.

16. The audio does not work at all.

17. How do I record the session to a wmv/avi file?

The recording feature in Groupworld records to a custom format on the
server, and can only be played back through Groupworld. With the 25-user or higher license, we can optionally
configure your Groupworld installation so that your recordings are automatically uploaded to Vimeo after each session — please email us to set this up (your sessions can be public, private, or unlisted). With the enterprise
version, it is possible to convert the recordings to mp4 video format.

18. How do I increase the number of video windows visible?

By default there is only space for 3 video windows, but you can increase
this if you have a wide/high room. You can also configure the video so
that only the presenter can send video, or so that only the person
talking can send video — this enables you to have 10 or 25 (or more) users but
only one person sending video.

19. How can I create a multi-room login page for Groupworld?

20. How can I increase the size of the video windows?

Just tick the "large video windows" option when creating a room, or enter
a specific size for "video width" and "video height".

21. How do I change the video framerate?

By default the video runs at a 8 frames per second when the user is
speaking and 4 frames per second when not speaking, but you can increase the framerate
when creating a new room ("default video framerate" option), but it will use more bandwidth. Alternatively you can enable WebRTC for the room, which uses 30 frames per second by default, as well as higher quality video. (WebRTC is now
enabled by default for new rooms).

22. I'm experiencing crashes/slowness/lost connections.

Try temporarily disabling browser toolbars, virus checkers and security
software in case they are interfering with Groupworld (normally this
should not be the case, so please let us know if
you do experience any incompatibilities with other software).

Bring up task manager (press the ctrl+alt+delete keys in Windows) to see
if another process is using all of your computer's cpu or memory.

Try pinging www.groupworld.net to see if there are any network problems.
In Windows, bring up a DOS window and type "ping www.groupworld.net". If
you experience more than 10% data loss, performance will be affected.

23. Why is there lag and/or missing pen strokes when using a Wacom tablet on Windows?

24. Why does the text get cut off where it says "there are x other users connected" and other places?

This generally means that you have changed to the larger fonts in Windows,
so Windows is giving us fonts that are 25% larger pixel size than we are asking
for. To fix this problem on Windows 7, right-click on your Windows desktop,
choose "screen resolution", then "make text and other items larger or smaller".

25. How do I type in math equations?

Simply add the optional math tools to your room (when editing the room), and you will have access to a graph plotter, equation editor and more. See the Math Tutoring Conference Room Demo for an example.

26. How do I ensure that users with different screen sizes see the same view of the whiteboard?

Simply set the "multi-user-pan" and/or "auto-zoom" whiteboard options when creating the room.

27. Why can't I select/move/delete uploaded images?

If you drag+drop the image onto the whiteboard, or paste it, you will then
be able to select it and move, resize or delete it. (We do this because
typically uploaded images are likely to be full-screen, and you won't want
them to move).

28. What bandwidth do I need in order to run the Groupworld server?

It is recommended that you have 512kbps (kilobits per second) for each
user connected from outside your network if you are using desktop sharing
or video. If you are not using these high-bandwidth applications then you will be
able to support a lot more users (e.g. whiteboard and text chat only, you
will be able to support 25 users on 256kbps). Note that this is the UPLOAD
bandwidth of your internet connection (which is generally lower than the
download bandwidth). The applications that use the
most bandwidth are desktop sharing, video conferencing and audio. The
audio (voice) conferencing uses 26kbps (kilobits per second) of bandwidth.
So, if you have one person speaking and 5 people connected, it will use
26x5 = 130kbps. The video conferencing uses 1.5-2k (kilobytes) per frame
when using the small window size, and 3-4k per frame when using the large
window size. So, if one user is broadcasting video to two other users
at 10 frames per second using the large window size, it will use about
2x4x10x8=640kbps of outbound bandwidth on the server, and 320kbps of upload
bandwidth on each user's computer. Desktop sharing sends a compressed
png image of the desktop at the beginning (which is generally 50-100k, depending
on the size of your desktop), and subsequently sends
the changed areas of the screen (again png compressed) once per second.
In general, 512kbps of bandwidth per person will give a good response, although
more bandwith will give a faster desktop sharing experience (especially
if you are sharing a large window). You can see how much bandwidth is being
used by transmitted/received by your computer by going to Activity Monitor on
a mac and clicking the Network tab (on a PC, just download a bandwidth monitor
tool). To see the bandwidth being used on your linux server, just use mrtg
or similar tool.

29. What technology does Groupworld use?

The Groupworld server is compiled C++ for maximum performance (in 1999
we had a peak of 400 simultaneous users on our server using 10% CPU time
of a 100Mhz CPU). We have not had any crashes or serious bugs in our
server software in a number of years. The client-side software used to
be a compiled C++ plugin. However since 2013 we have used an HTML5
plugin-free client based on javascript and
WebRTC technology.